MDNews - Minnesota

MnGi Digestive Health: Experts in Comprehensive, Complex Subspecialty Care BY JOSH GARCIA MNGI DIGESTIVE HEALTH HAS BUILT A PRACTICE THAT OFFERS MUCH MORE THAN PROCEDURES-FOCUSED CARE, WITH THE LONG-TERM HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF PATIENTS BEING THE MAIN PRIORIT Y ACROSS THE PRACTICE'S MANY SUBSPECIALT Y CLINICS. F O R A L M O S T 2 5 Y E A R S , M NGI Digestive Health has focused on providing greater access to quality gastrointestinal (GI) care across the state of Minnesota and the upper Midwest. With the addition of its newest Woodbury location, MNGI Digestive Health now has eight outpatient clinic locations and shows no signs of slowing its expansion efforts. "Most of our office locations include a clinic and ambulatory surgery centers [ASCs] with four endoscopic procedure rooms in addition to clinic exam rooms," says Scott Ketover, MD, AGAF, FASGE, President and CEO of MNGI Digestive Health. "We've also formed a partnership with Colon & Rectal Surgery Associates and University of Minnesota Physicians to create an additional ASC in Saint Paul." In addition to its dedicated outpa- tient clinics, MNGI Digestive Hea lth also supplies GI coverage to 13 metro- politan area hospita ls, including two pediatric hospita ls. Physicia ns from MNGI Digestive Hea lth ca n provide on-site consultation to doctors, staff, patients and families at these locations with around-the-clock availability. "We have long-standing relationships with these hospitals," Dr. Ketover says. "We're always looking to collaborate and do joint ventures to bring quality services to all patients." COLLABORATION AND OPTIMIZATION MNGI Digestive Health's commitment to quality and innovation has been on display for decades. The practice was an early adopter of the Pay for Performance (P4P) model of health care, which provides physicians with funds based on their clini- cal outcomes and performance. " N o t m a n y o r g a n i z a t i o n s h a d implemented P4P in the early 2000s," Dr. Ketover says. "We dove in and made i nt er na l cha n ges t o ma ke su re ou r physicians could respond to pathology results quickly and relay that information to patients and referring providers." Much of this communication wa s fostered by the early adoption of EHR systems, which MNGI Digestive Health also embraced in the early 2000s, before many of its peers. Whereas the national benchmark for providing patients with patholog y results was 14 days at the time, MNGI Digestive Health was able to shorten this period to only three days. " EHR a llowed us to automate a nd digitize a lot of processes related to com- munication," Dr. Ketover says. "We could order tests for patients and get the results interpreted by physicians faster, which allowed us to get information to patients in a much shorter time frame." EHR ha s a llowed MNGI Digestive Hea lt h to faci litate com mun ication with external providers in the area, too, which helps keep them up to date on their 0 8 0 8❱❱❱❱❱ C O V E R S T O R Y

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